Left Behind
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl, short, S2, Ep1 "What Lies Ahead." Daryl couldn't speak for Rick's actions because he hadn't been there, but the one thing he knew was that he wouldn't have left her behind. Rated for Dixon language.


**AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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By the time that Daryl made it to the guardrail, Carol looked like she was ready to vomit or pass out. It was pretty evident that her body just hadn't decided which it was going to feel more comfortable doing at the moment. He caught up to hear Rick explaining that the blood—the sight of which had reduced the woman to the state where she could barely be helped to sit down before she fell down—was Walker blood.

Rick's words were supposed to make the whole thing more comforting. They were supposed to assure her that the blood, if nothing else, hadn't belonged to the body of her daughter. All his explanation did was send her farther in whatever direction she was already headed—possibly toward hysteria—because now it had brought up another thing to think about. It was something that Daryl had already thought about and, he knew, Rick had thought about it too.

If there was one Walker out there, beyond the ones that Rick had killed, there were others. They were out there, roaming around, in the same woods where Sophia was currently lost.

That's why they'd dissected it. It wasn't because Daryl was sad that he'd cut some particular day in school and missed dissection in Biology. It wasn't because he wanted to get up close and personal with the guts and bowels of a putrid corpse. It was to check and make sure that the fat bastard's last meal hadn't been a lost little girl.

As soon as Carol began to crumble, Rick comforted her with words that promised her that the Walker hadn't gotten Sophia. It had been nowhere near her. And, like anybody that wasn't out there, Carol wanted to know how the man could be confident of such a statement.

"Cut the son of a bitch open," Daryl said, feeling like he should offer her something since he failed to bring back the little girl that he'd imagined himself bringing to her by now. "Made sure."

She didn't look much better. At most, she simply looked like she'd decided to bypass vomiting and go straight for passing out. If she weren't sitting on the guardrail, Daryl thought that he might point out to someone that it would be a pretty good idea to get her as close to the ground as possible so her fall—when she finally went out—wouldn't be as great as it would be if she were standing up.

Finally, though, the despair that she seemed to be feeling over her lost kid turned into anger. It was anger directed at Rick, too, and she didn't hold back. Daryl could see, even from where he was standing, the fire that was burning just behind her eyes. She wanted to strangle Rick. She wanted to take out, on him, all the frustration and rage that she felt.

"How could you just leave her out there to begin with?" Carol asked, her voice breaking a little. "How could you just leave her?"

She went on. Rick offered up his excuses, none of which Daryl listened to. Lori, too, tossed out her two cents like it was worth even the air that she used to produce the words.

Nothing they could say was going to make Carol feel better. Nothing they were going to say was going to take away the pain that she wore on her features and nothing was going to douse that anger that was burning down deep inside of her.

The only remedy for what ailed the woman, at this point, was the little girl. The only way she was going to feel better was if they produced Sophia at that moment and the girl ran right back into Carol's arms—arms she'd barely left for the amount of time that Daryl had known either one of them.

Walking around out there, Daryl had asked himself the same question that Carol had asked Rick—even if the tone of voice in his head was different than the one she employed. He didn't feel the same anger that Carol felt—he had no reason to, it wasn't his kid—but he'd felt a certain amount of morbid curiosity and, maybe, just a little disbelief.

 _How could he just leave her out there? She was just a kid. How could he just leave her?_

He tried to put himself in Rick's shoes. He imagined two of those nasty bastards on his ass. He tried to imagine the kick of adrenaline he'd feel. It couldn't have been too much different than the feeling he'd gotten trying to save T-Dog's ass when the herd had passed through and the man came just a little too close to being a snack. He tried to imagine the fear that, if they caught him, they'd tear him apart. When it had happened, he'd been too far away—too far down the line of cars-and by the time he realized what was going on, the action had progressed too much for him to be able to jump in and join the chase after Sophia. But if he'd gotten there first? He tried to imagine what he would've done in Rick's shoes.

It was easy enough, and Daryl knew this from a number of situations that he'd been in, to imagine himself being some kind of superhero in the whole thing. He could say that he wouldn't have feared the Walkers at all. He could say that he'd have simply grabbed up Sophia, taken down the Walkers like slapping at mosquitos, and carried her right back up to the highway to be done with the whole thing. But he also knew that, very often, the way people reacted to things when they were knee deep in shit was a helluva lot different than the way they boasted they'd act when there wasn't a single thing threatening them.

Still, he couldn't imagine that he'd have left her. He just couldn't imagine it was a route that he'd have taken. When Rick walked them down there, walked them through what happened, and showed them where he'd tucked the girl in the dam in the creek, Daryl couldn't imagine it. He knew, even if he didn't know how he might have handled the situation, that he wouldn't have left her there. At least, if he had tucked her into the little niche, he wouldn't have gone too far from there.

He might've put her in the dam to keep her out from under foot and far enough away from the Walkers that he didn't have to worry about her—but he would've handled them as quickly as possible. He wouldn't have gone leading them some great distance away to kill them. He'd have come up with something and he'd have done it, preferably, before they ever reached the other side of the creek bed.

He wouldn't have left the kid because he knew what the hell it was like to get left. He knew what the hell it felt like, as a kid, to be so damn small and to realize that you were on your own and everybody that you counted on to take care of your ass just wasn't there. They were too far gone from you and it was up to you to save your own ass.

And if he was shitting over the two Walkers? If he was as scared as Rick somewhat claimed to be—terrified enough to leave the kid alone because he didn't know if he'd even be able to save himself? Then how damn scared would he have figured the kid might've been?

Daryl could spin it a hundred ways in his imagination, but he wasn't there. He didn't feel what Rick felt and he hadn't experienced the events unfolding the same way that Rick had. He couldn't speak for Rick's actions, even if he could wonder about them quietly while Carol sat on the guardrail and wondered about them out loud. He couldn't say exactly what he would've done or how he might've gone about the whole situation.

But the one thing that Daryl _could_ say, even if he only said it to himself and didn't say it out loud—because Rick didn't seem the kind of man who liked to be challenged and certainly didn't seem to be the kind that liked his mistakes pointed out to him—was that he wouldn't have left the kid alone in the woods.

Daryl was sure of that.

If it had been him? They might very well both be dead right now—because shit might've gotten out of his control—but they'd know damn good and well where Sophia was because she'd be stuck to him. Or, better yet, she'd be back stuck to her mother who was nearly going to have a stroke on the side of the highway.

She _wouldn't_ be left behind and lost in the woods.


End file.
